Master Your Story

We enjoyed having Megan on the show last month we brought her back to discuss a the hot topic of "Work/Life Balance" There are so many books, magazine articles, podcast and media in general focusing on this topic. We found Megan's approach to be refreshing and easy. Click on the link and listen in to our discussion. Feeling frazzled with your life? Megan was once too, but not anymore. To learn more about it or to stay connected with more information, sign up with your email address and we will keep you informed.

There are three phases in audience analysis. The first is adapting to your audience before you speak. There are three ways to do this: demographic analysis, attitudinal analysis, and environmental analysis. Demographic analysis involves age, gender, culture, ethnicity, race, religion, and educational level. Audience analysis is the process of examining information about your listeners. That analysis helps you to adapt your message so that your listeners will respond as you wish. In everyday conversations you adapt your message to your audience. For example, if you went to a party the night before, you would explain the party differently to your friends and family. To your best friend you might say, "We partied all night and there were tons of people there." To your mother you might say, "Oh, I had fun with my friends." And to your significant other you might say, "It was fun, I had a great bonding time with my friends." In each of these situations, you are adapting your message to your listening audience. Th

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I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it - Nelson Mandela In this week's Master Your Story podcast we speak with Megan Crume.  Megan has overcome many fearful struggles in her life and is now an entrepreneur who owns her own mobile ice-cream business.  Join us as we discuss how Megan faced those fears applied proven processes and became successful. Fear can be a roadblock to finding your story.  In chapter 13 of Master Your Story, It Matters, we take an in-depth look into ways to over come your fears.  What you can accomplish in life, what you are capable of, depends on your ability to overcome fear.  In the book we look into the following process to overcome fear: Phase One: Acceptance.  Take the time to really accept the fact that fear is always going to be there.  It won't go away. Phase Two: Feel the fear.  Most people think if they ignore the feelings it will go away.  It doesn't. It merely sinks deeper into you and the next time it comes up again its harder to face. Ph

A segment from Chapter 5 of Master Your Story When you're talking to a five-year-old about going to the dentist, the conversation would be about defining what each part of the dentist office is, who the assistant is, who the dentist is, what the machinery looks like. You would be describing the tools that they would use, and many of the things that they would need to know to be comfortable when they arrive at the dental office. You would not be speaking of the gas, or the shots, nor the painful things that a dentist office would be to a five-year-old going for the first time. Preparation is an important part of going to the dentist. Audience preparation would be the same. They do not need to understand, as a brand new salesperson or a brand new person, how long a labor's going to be, how long it's going to be before they make a million dollars. That's not going to solve their problem, nor is it going to encourage or empower them to take one single next step. However, if you can paint the picture that allows t

Th rapidly growing cyber threat to our critical industrial, consumer and community infrastructure needs a new approach to cyber defense.    

From the time we are born to this present moment, milestones are a part of our DNA. Beginning with our very first birthday to a long awaited 50th wedding anniversary and all the significant dates in between, historical markers not only provide us with a sense of accomplishment but also showcase great accomplishments. It is with joyful celebration that we announce Master Your Story has made it to it first anniversary.  The team has accomplished 52 episodes and we are still going strong. The podcast was designed to be part of the full Master Your Story experience.  Over the coming weeks we will be rolling out new portions to the program such as webinars, lectures, workbooks and yes the long awaited book.  Today we take the time to pause, revisit the meaning of Master Your Story and to thank all the great guests we had this year! We would also like to thank the companies and people who have made this program a national success.  A huge thank you to Matthew Siess who has diligently handled the operations of guest

We Need To Celebrate By Kim I. Plyler Ten years a go, a client of mine who is very successful, has  a family, runs her own business and is the person who has an answer for every question, once shared with me her fear of celebration.  "Fear of celebration, I thought wow how can you fear that?"  After much discussion my client's fear turned into a quest.  A quest for her to celebrate and enjoy it.   Too many of us run on the need to be super humans, as if we are in a life challenge.  We are constantly competing to be better instead of just being. This type of behavior stems from a lot of different reasons.  But its time we move forward into taking care of ourselves, and taking the time to just be and to celebrate it.  As a recovering super humans, we can all take time to breathe and celebrate life's milestones. This is why for the next few weeks the team here at "Master Your Story" will be celebrating our one year anniversary.  Hard to believe but we launched our podcast 52 weeks ago.  We have had guests from a

We are beginning to enter a time of change in regards to media and how we consume information. While many people think that we are stuck in the time of social media, I believe that we are actually entering a new realm of the social media world – one where transparency and popularity govern what is said and what is being pushed out to large audiences. Mainstream social mediums, such as Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram will always appeal to a large group of people, but how will our discussions on social media sites change? We are seeing glimpses of this shift already with major blogging websites that make sharing ideas, articles, and information incredibly easy, taking away from traditional blogs or traditional media. Blogging sites like Medium or Steemit allow for the most popular articles to be pushed to the top of the page, or even to make money for individual bloggers – this is change. The key to this social media shift, if you will, is finding how consumers and companies can use social media to their benef

As the late Spanish philosopher, poet, and author put it best, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. The point of research is to understand the past, to learn from it, and to apply it to whatever it is you’re doing. Weather this is to either mimic past successes, or not to repeat failure, researching is key. Without doing it prior to the task you are working on, all your hard work could end up in failure. Research does not have to be limited to learning from the past however. For a business, research is crucial to keeping your company competitive and at the top of your fields industry. There is a reason that companies around the globe invest heavily into research. That reason is so they can keep their advantage over rival companies by offering the best product that they possibly can. However, the main reason why research is invaluable is that you do get to learn from the past. For instance, I was involved with a new project at my internship. We were tasked with finding out about wh

Life is a journey that provides various experiences, highs & lows, opportunities & challenges, stagnation & change.  Things happen.  However the question is not whether we can or can’t, it is “how to”. Each of us has our strengths, talents, dreams, potential and challenges.  We have situations, limitations, idiosyncrasies that we would like to overcome.  We need to understand our many facets and the various factors that contribute to who we are.  Understanding ourselves is the starting point for determining the “how to” for our next steps in life, whatever the goal or outcome that is desired.  We may not be able to do whatever the way we have seen it done, but we can figure out a way they we can do it.  With my background in rehabilitation counseling and being a multi-talent, I facilitate others in developing and experiencing their potential with “disabilities” or with characteristics of a high intellect and creativity.  It is a process of understanding, overcoming, developing, expressing and conn

Cheyenne Bennett is the Leadership & Talent Coach of Compass Point Consulting, LLC. She is a leadership trainer focused on serving family businesses. She helps owners and their leadership teams grow their self-awareness with the purpose of cultivating high-performing teams and driving organizational culture. Her focus on self awareness, communication, healthy conflict, and teams gives organizations the ability to create and live by a value-oriented organizational culture while meetingthe demands of daily business.

Naimah Ward is one who believes in the power of discovering your true self, your true purpose and then being in pursuit of what you have discovered as long as it lies within the scope of truth. As a devoted Wife, Mother, Pastor, Professor and Entrepreneur, Naimah has made this her personal mission to impact lives – Find a need and meet it! Find and hurt and heal it! Find a problem and solve it! Below is a guest post from Naimah. My turning point occurred when I began to realize the value in developing not just my skills to speak publicly, but my communication skills overall! Oh what an amazing eye opener this was for me! During my collegiate studies, I decided to challenge myself and enroll in an advanced public speaking course. After experiencing the benefits of facing this fear head on, I began to see how my life started to evolve. Fear no longer had me in its grip. I developed such a passion for the art of communication and public speaking. As an educator, I teach my students not only how to overcome gloss

EDITORS NOTE – This Mort Report Extra is a basic guide for keeping track of the world. It is long. Headlines are only headlines; news summaries and snippets are not enough for seeing detailed distant reality. We can read Sophocles in crib notes, but that risks missing the part about Oedipus poking out his own eyes. PARIS – The noble ostrich is impressive to watch loping along an African savannah at 50 miles an hour, but its survival strategy needs work. With head in the sand and tail in the air, it risks ending up skinned for some rich guy’s cowboy boots or maybe a Mar-a-Lago golf bag. My recent piece about the White House jihad on truth prompted one reader to remark that Donald Trump’s slurs resonate because “the msm (mainstream media) is no longer trustworthy or helpful.” Big news companies make up a single collective to be dismissed out of hand. Here’s a parallel: The smc (supermarket chains) no longer provide nutritious food. Of course, they do. Choice is up to each shopper. Those who load up their c

Have you ever asked yourself why do prospect trust one digital brand and not the other? Have you ever wondered why folks seem to 'feel' your brand is trustworthy but couldn't quite explain? Short answer? Well, it's not that simple. In digital branding, we use combination of behavior and cognitive psychology, market research, creativity, User Experience, User Interface design and a few good strategies to help expedite the 'trust building process'. Why should you care? Because by definition, the faster you can build digital trust, the faster your target prospect (whether recruit, prospect or partner) can truly evaluate what your substance!  1. Leverage Your Client’s Reputation Post the logos or names of your top clients in a prominent portion of your web site or digital storefront. Buyers are more likely to accelerate their purchase decision if they see that larger companies than theirs, or of the same size, have purchased your products or services.  2. Use Recognizable Terminology  Don’t invent new lines of bu

Presently, I am leading a Touchstone Theatre initiative called Festival UnBound, Celebrating out 21st. Century Village, planned for October of 2019.  This is the most difficult thing with which I've ever ever been involved.  Once we were two Bethlehems, and it was 100 years ago North and South realized the importance of working together and became “one” (and, we’re still working on it). Here’s an image of the two Bethlehems, in “the good ol’ days”, when “working together” may seem to us a remarkably less complex challenge, but back then it was as “crazy hard” as anything one could imagine.  To create a Festival of original art envisioning the future of our community, we’ve got to get EVERYBODY working together, collaborating to imagine what kind of future we want for this city called “Bethlehem”--through dialogue and the creation of original art.  The problem is, more and more, as we sit down and talk with folks, it becomes apparent that everything affects everything else.  Let’s say you’re homeless. One migh

While our troops are out defending our country, who is defending them from cyber attacks.  Meet Rob Carey, VP of Cybersecurity and Cloud Solutions for General Dynamics IT Defense Division.  Rob's career has spanned military service in the US Navy as well as supporting the Department of Defense as a federal government employee and now a contractor.  He is responsible for developing and delivering cybersecurity, cloud and UC offerings to clients within the Department of Defense. Prior to this role, he worked for CSC and Vencore leading operational business units supporting the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. Rob's mission is clear, his story is defend those who are defending us.   Join us in today's discussion when Rob addresses two of the most important things our county, industry and corporate can do to ensure not only the safety of our troops but the safety of our entire country. The team at #MasterYourStory would like to thank rob for stoping by to talk with us and for his service to t

Join us today as we discuss the importance of graphics in tell your story.  We spoke with Bryan Ayala, CEO of CentroDigital about how graphics need to tell the story and convey a mission even without text.  With the ever changing internet landscape graphic have become a way to capture emotion in one frame as well as tell the story of a company.  How to capture the correct information and bring it all together in a graphic is truly a work of intellect and art.

Join us today as we speak with John Brown CEO of John Brown Leadership Solutions.  John's career includes serving in public office, Wall St and so much more.  He is a senior executive with broad industry and public-sector experience providing leadership that complements vision and execution. Transmutes critical thinking about the organization’s challenges into dynamic strategic advantages and actualizes innovative solutions to create outstanding results. Join us as he shares his story of how he uses life experiences to foster better leadership.